80 THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



CORRESPONDENCE. 



DANAIS ARCHIPPUS. 



Dear Sir, — The butterfly Danais archippus is not only harmless, but 



beneficial. Its food plant (Asclepias) is very troublesome to farmers 



in this part. The butterfly almost always lays her eggs on the 



pedicel of the flower, so that when the larvae hatch, they attack the 



flowers and eat down into the ovaries. I have seen an umbel of flowers 



eaten almost entirely by two larvae. I think they are quite a check to 



this weed, hindering it from seeding. If they only fed on the leaves, they 



could not possibly hurt the plant. The mature larva does not feed on the 



flowers, probably because when it reaches maturity there are not many 



flowers left. 



George Haley, Brownfield, Maine. 



OPHELETES GLAUCOPTERUS PARASITIC UPON CIMBEX AMERICANA. 



Dear Sir, — In the autumn of 1884, I picked up in my garden a larva 

 of Ci?)ibex Afuericana, Leach. This has always been one of my favourite 

 insects, not only for the beauty of the pale yellow larva, with the stripe of 

 deep black down the centre of its back, but also on account of the 

 interest which centres around the emergence of the  imago in spring, to 

 see, should it chance, to be a female, to which of the three " varieties" it 

 might belong. As the larva in question was apparently full fed, I placed 

 it in a box with some earth and a few of the leaves of its food-plant 

 {UltJius Americana, L.) and in a few days it spun its hard, brown cocoon. 

 The following spring, on looking into the box, I was much pleased to find, 

 instead of the well known, gaudy and clumsy Cimbex, a fine female of the 

 handsome Ichneumon fly, Opheletes glaucopterus, Linn., a species not at 

 all common at Ottawa. J. F. 



